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Topic: Obsidian's "Pillars of Eternity" (Read 206092 times)
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Malakili
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Posts: 10596
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Obsidian working without a publisher to force them to do QA sounds very dangerous. I expect a game with a large scope that barely functions.
This is more or less why I'm not pitching in. If its good, great, I'll buy it. But I have a bad feeling about this.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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I'm thinking it's a scam. This will be the Duke Nukem Forever of western RPGs.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Amaron
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2020
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Either the game comes out and it's good or it's a failure and Chris Avellone is blacklisted by his former fans. Win-win.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Or he moves to another country on the windfall and gives no fucks.
Scaaaaaaaaaam.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Merusk
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Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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Obsidian working without a publisher to force them to do QA sounds very dangerous. I expect a game with a large scope that barely functions.
I hadn't even considered that; excellent point. So it'll come out 4 years later AND buggy as fuck because of no publisher push to get shit wrapped-up and cleaned-up. I'm thinking it's a scam. This will be the Duke Nukem Forever of western RPGs.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Amaron
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2020
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Or he moves to another country on the windfall and gives no fucks.
Scaaaaaaaaaam.
This is just a drop in the bucket compared to the money the company regularly works with. I'd say the real worry is that they'll simply use it up on some other title. Then when that project bombs they have no cash left to finish Eternity.
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Simond
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Posts: 6742
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Obsidian working without a publisher to force them to do QA sounds very dangerous. I expect a game with a large scope that barely functions. Counterpoint: Obsidian is working without a publisher that suddenly halves the development time and tells them to ship it in three months, finished or not and then bases payment on Metacritic score.
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"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."
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koro
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2307
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Or: Obsidian is working without a publisher who, after announcing the delay of a game for 10 months, refuses to let them actually work on it in the intervening period.
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Riggswolfe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8024
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I did the $35 pledge. The way I view it is worst case scenario, I'm out $35. Best case I get something akin to a modern Balder's Gate. The truth will likely be somewhere in the middle.
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"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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I find your lack of cynicism disturbing.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Zetor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3269
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Everyone knows it's going to be Alpha Protocol 2: Revenge of the South Park RPG - obviously.
I flushed $20 down the drain pitched in for The Cause because this team was also responsible for at least three of my favorite games. I expect nothing but tears and the gnashing of teeth, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised!
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60345
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I feel like we're sort of missing something as a collective in this thread. When I give money to an indie thing on Kickstarter, it's between $20 and $100 and I get the product within 6 months outside of insanely bad outliers that are rare in the current days of Kickstarter (but were fairly common a year ago - Glory to Rome Black Box and Dice Age spring to mind).
This Kickstarter is for a game that will not come out for well over a year if it EVER comes out.
Am I the only one that thinks this is totally crazytown? Also, am I the only one that thinks that if a company like Obsidian having worked on properties like SWTOR and such can't fund a goddamn few million dollar game, that they probably won't be able to do it even with the funding? (Here's to hoping I'm wrong)
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ghost
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I still find it funny that you donated to Dice Age.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Quiet, you.
I think it is also crazytown, but far be it from me to tell people how to manage their personal resources. I just happen to think that modern games are beyond the ability of Obsidian and the faults with their more contemporary games are not entirely due to asshat publishers. I'm not donating to this, and only partly due to my own financial situation.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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ghost
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Hey, I've donated to more crackpot shit than schild would ever dream of, so I can at least poke at him for Dice Age. I'm wondering what percentage of this shit will actually come through in the end. I'm sad to say that Obsidian got my $20 for this one.........
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
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just happen to think that modern games are beyond the ability of Obsidian
New Vegas was basically flawless other than one really shitty DLC. Well, flawless might not be the word. It was "without any major issues" perhaps. That said, I don't think anyone donating to this expects, or really *wants* a "modern" game out of it. They want a throwback.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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ghost
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Wasn't New Vegas basically handed to them on a silver platter? What did they have to do other than retool FO3?
Also, which DLC do you consider shitty from New Vegas?
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
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Dead Money is the crappy one.
I don't know what magical thing they did to make the FO3 engine work, but FO3 crashed for me literally dozens of times. I had lockups maybe 2 or 3 times in New Vegas. Beyond that though, I think pretty much every system in the game is improved in New Vegas compared to FO3, the story is better, the characters are better, the game feels far more "Fallout" probably because the people who were making it, you know, made Fallout.
And none of that is to say that FO3 was a bad game, it was pretty good when it wasn't locking up or going all video-crazy, but New Vegas is several notches above IMO.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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ghost
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Yeah, I agree with you on those points. Dead money was interesting one time through, but it's not one that I care to play again. It reminded me too much of the things that bugged the shit out of me about Bioshock.
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Bunk
Contributor
Posts: 5828
Operating Thetan One
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I chipped in on this based on nostalgia alone. I'd been craving this type of oldschool rpg for a while, but I just can't bring myself to going back to 10 year old pc interfaces.
To me, the chance of getting something BG2 like again, is worth a $20 gamble. Even if it might be two years from now.
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"Welcome to the internet, pussy." - VDL "I have retard strength." - Schild
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Margalis
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12335
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New Vegas was basically flawless other than one really shitty DLC. Well, flawless might not be the word. It was "without any major issues" perhaps.
Blue-screened every 5 minutes on my co-workers PC.
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vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021
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Dead Money is the crappy one.
I don't know what magical thing they did to make the FO3 engine work, but FO3 crashed for me literally dozens of times. I had lockups maybe 2 or 3 times in New Vegas. Beyond that though, I think pretty much every system in the game is improved in New Vegas compared to FO3, the story is better, the characters are better, the game feels far more "Fallout" probably because the people who were making it, you know, made Fallout.
And none of that is to say that FO3 was a bad game, it was pretty good when it wasn't locking up or going all video-crazy, but New Vegas is several notches above IMO.
So they're good at making an expansion pack (the stability might have been better for you, but wasn't for all, and it might have been due to work others did on the engine, not them) - doesn't mean they have gained the ability to make a good game from scratch.
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Amaron
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2020
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Am I the only one that thinks this is totally crazytown? Also, am I the only one that thinks that if a company like Obsidian having worked on properties like SWTOR and such can't fund a goddamn few million dollar game, that they probably won't be able to do it even with the funding? (Here's to hoping I'm wrong)
Twenty bucks is really nothing though. That's a cheap date. I pre-bought GW2 for $60 and I hardly played it. Buying games is always this sort of risk. Also Obsidian didn't work on SWTOR did they? They've always been the type of studio to work off publisher loans anyways.
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Llyse
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Posts: 1341
Calvin and Hobbes are back to maul the fuck outta you.
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Twenty bucks is really nothing though. That's a cheap date. I pre-bought GW2 for $60 and I hardly played it. Buying games is always this sort of risk. Also Obsidian didn't work on SWTOR did they? They've always been the type of studio to work off publisher loans anyways.
$20 is a tightarse date but I realise now I shouldn't just contribute to stuff I think is cool but won't even spend time on anymore. That said I really would love a new UI Baldur's gate... I'll just eat the money cost when they release a GOTY edition
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Malakili
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10596
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I feel like we're sort of missing something as a collective in this thread. When I give money to an indie thing on Kickstarter, it's between $20 and $100 and I get the product within 6 months outside of insanely bad outliers that are rare in the current days of Kickstarter (but were fairly common a year ago - Glory to Rome Black Box and Dice Age spring to mind).
This Kickstarter is for a game that will not come out for well over a year if it EVER comes out.
Am I the only one that thinks this is totally crazytown? Also, am I the only one that thinks that if a company like Obsidian having worked on properties like SWTOR and such can't fund a goddamn few million dollar game, that they probably won't be able to do it even with the funding? (Here's to hoping I'm wrong)
I am willing to go in on a game very early if they will give me a copy of the game AND (note AND) give me something playable right away. I went in Minecraft pretty early in alpha, I went in on Project Zomboid very early in alpha, and I went in on Natural Selection 2 very early in beta. In all cases I got something playable (in all cases admittedly barely), but to me that made it go from "would never do" to "Well, if all else fails I got to play something for a while." So in other words, yes, I think this is crazytown.
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Lucas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3298
Further proof that Italians have suspect taste in games.
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Update #3: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/310512As it stands right now: * Party size: Player Character + up to 5 companions * Party formations (pre-set and user created) * Character creation is in (sex, class, race & subrace, traits, ability scores, portrait, gear, skills, talents) * fully fledged companions (game mechanics and narrative purposes, strategic approach to fights; reactive to PC and game world) * "Companions are never forced on the player. Players can explore the entire world and its story on their own if they so choose." Set up: The player witnesses an extraordinary and horrific supernatural event that thrusts them into a unique and difficult circumstance. Burdened with the consequences of this event, the player has to investigate what has happened in order to free themselves from the restless forces that follow and haunt them wherever they go. And more at the above mentioned link (including a video by Josh Sawyer basically repeating the same stuff).
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" He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman." - Ironwood on J.J. Abrams
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Hawkbit
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5531
Like a Klansman in the ghetto.
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I feel like we're sort of missing something as a collective in this thread. When I give money to an indie thing on Kickstarter, it's between $20 and $100 and I get the product within 6 months outside of insanely bad outliers that are rare in the current days of Kickstarter (but were fairly common a year ago - Glory to Rome Black Box and Dice Age spring to mind).
This Kickstarter is for a game that will not come out for well over a year if it EVER comes out.
Am I the only one that thinks this is totally crazytown? Also, am I the only one that thinks that if a company like Obsidian having worked on properties like SWTOR and such can't fund a goddamn few million dollar game, that they probably won't be able to do it even with the funding? (Here's to hoping I'm wrong)
I am willing to go in on a game very early if they will give me a copy of the game AND (note AND) give me something playable right away. I went in Minecraft pretty early in alpha, I went in on Project Zomboid very early in alpha, and I went in on Natural Selection 2 very early in beta. In all cases I got something playable (in all cases admittedly barely), but to me that made it go from "would never do" to "Well, if all else fails I got to play something for a while." So in other words, yes, I think this is crazytown. I wanted to say this the other day, but figured I'd be laughed at for not "supporting" the Kickstarter idea. If we were six months out and had seen some gameplay, I'd likely drop my cash. However, nearly two years out from launch (in a perfect scenario)? Hell, I might be dead by then. Then I'd be a net loss of $20. But that's not the point, is it?
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
Auto Assault Affectionado
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I don't think anyone is going to crawl up your ass for not throwing money at a Kickstarter of any kind. Except maybe Sky with Reaper minis.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Margalis
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12335
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Another thing that bothers me about this is that game design should naturally change during development. It's really odd to commit to very specific things like companion counts or how they should work exactly before going through any prototyping and testing.
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vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
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I don't believe in most of the Kickstarters for video games that I've seen. So this one appears no more crazy to me than all the people who saw the words "Double Find point-and-click adventure released sometime later this year" and just had to throw cash at it.
If a studio has something tangible and needs some extra money from Kickstarter to finish the game, that's one thing. But the whole "we haven't started pre-production yet, here is some concept art and 3D models that may or may not have been created for this game, you'll get a t-shirt if you act now" approach just turns me off. And then there are the Kickstarters to create investor demos.
A lot of gamers have come to see the publishers as the bad guys, so that if only there were no publishers holding studios to ransom then the games would be better. Kickstarter is going to be an interesting testbed for that theory.
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Teleku
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Posts: 10510
https://i.imgur.com/mcj5kz7.png
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Another thing that bothers me about this is that game design should naturally change during development. It's really odd to commit to very specific things like companion counts or how they should work exactly before going through any prototyping and testing.
Frankly, I think those are imaginary carrots they're holding out to help encourage people to donate more. Pretty sure most of that shit plus more will go in regardless of how much money the kickstarter nets them. I have a feeling that in this case, it really is a kickstarter, where they'll get an initial couple million to get them going, which then gives them more leverage to have investors pick up the remainder of the bill. I threw a good chunk of money at it because I have plenty of disposable income right now, I've enjoyed the vast majority of Obsidian games, and I want to see a new version of Balder's gate (and encourage more to be made). God knows I don't trust the corpse of Bioware at this point. Threw money at the Wasteland Kickstarter for the same reason. Also, apparently I'm blessed, because I don't think any of the Fallout games ever crashed on me. Ever since I built this Windows 7 machine about 3-4'ish years back, I've had zero problems with any games. I'd just assumed Microsoft figured out how not to suck or something....
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"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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New Vegas was basically flawless other than one really shitty DLC. Well, flawless might not be the word. It was "without any major issues" perhaps.
Don't throw a chain by backpedaling too hard. What I think I want to do is copy this thread off somewhere and replace all the F13 poster names with Q2T ones, Obsidian references with LucasArts, and Kickstarter with Nigeria, then repost it a few months down the road and see what sort of outcry there is.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Amaron
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2020
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A lot of gamers have come to see the publishers as the bad guys, so that if only there were no publishers holding studios to ransom then the games would be better.
In this case it's not "better" it's that publishers won't make stuff in this particular niche. It's been a long time and the only attempt was DA1 which was still a huge derivation from that formula.
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Rendakor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10131
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Dead Money is the crappy one.
I don't know what magical thing they did to make the FO3 engine work, but FO3 crashed for me literally dozens of times. I had lockups maybe 2 or 3 times in New Vegas. Beyond that though, I think pretty much every system in the game is improved in New Vegas compared to FO3, the story is better, the characters are better, the game feels far more "Fallout" probably because the people who were making it, you know, made Fallout.
And none of that is to say that FO3 was a bad game, it was pretty good when it wasn't locking up or going all video-crazy, but New Vegas is several notches above IMO.
While I'll agree with you on story and gameplay stuff, FO3 ran MUCH better for me than NV. I had very few technical problems with 3, while NV gave me a lot of crashes/lockups, and several glitchy quests including one that was broken entirely for me due to dialogue selection.
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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Koyasha
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Posts: 1363
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Arcanum was pretty buggy, but it was also absolutely amazing, and I still find things in it that are interesting and different. Even if these games are buggy like a lot of Obsidian games have been, if they even begin to approach the awesome of the old games like Arcanum, Torment, Baldur's Gate, etc, I'll be happy having thrown as much money at this project as I can afford.
And yeah, I just don't see publishers funding the kind of game that they suggest this is going to be these days. By throwing money at this game I'm saying I like the idea. I don't know if their specific implementation is going to be all I want, but at minimum the idea is one I support and would like to see more of. This seems like the best way for me to express that in a meaningful way, because it says I am demonstrably willing to spend money on a particular type of game. Same reason I'm going to be buying the BG enhanced edition; not because I really want anything they've added to it, since I already have that game in several formats, but because it says 'yes I am still willing to spend money on games like this, please observe this fact and make more'.
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-Do you honestly think that we believe ourselves evil? My friend, we seek only good. It's just that our definitions don't quite match.- Ailanreanter, Arcanaloth
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